Shadows on the Cave Wall
by Mojave Dragonfly
Summary: The O5 crew are abruptly not themselves.
1. At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners

Shadows On The Cave Wall

By Dragonfly

Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to Odyssey 5. They belong to other people. Written for krazykipper.

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><p>Chuck sat on the back porch of his house – their house, his and Paige's, chugging lemonade and staring at the back yard. His leave from NASA wasn't up for another four days. He knew he should be thinking, planning, figuring things out, but his mind had turned over all control to his heart. His aching, broken heart. He took a gulp of lemonade and the sun came out, spreading brilliance over the yard, brighter and brighter until he lost all vision in the blinding white.<p>

scene change

Neil toyed with his pen, his mind far from Mr. Darling's lecture in U.S. Government class. Though his mysteriously improved grades were holding, Neil hadn't had any concentration in any of his classes for over a week. None of his teachers seemed inclined to call him on it, though. Apparently losing your mother bought you license to daydream in school. The death of his mother caused a huge painful rip in Neil's reality, such as his reality was. He felt like he'd lost his father, as well, since Chuck's grief seemed to have killed his fighting spirit. Neil understood better than he liked to admit. What was the point of struggling to save the earth when it wouldn't bring Paige back? To his father, any future they might save looked bleak and loveless, but for Neil, the loss of his mother had focused him even more on the task at hand. Who knew? What with time traveling consciousness, sentients, synthetics, and aliens who lived outside of time, anything was possible, even something that might restore his mother to his timeline. He was too young to give up on his future.

"… can anyone tell me? Neil?"

Neil looked up at the teacher, startled, and everything in the room suddenly faded into white emptiness.

scene change

Kurt lit small votive candles discreetly placed around his apartment, preparing his place for the arrival of Jennie, or, Gina – he'd better figure out what her name was as quickly as he could manage. He started the CD player – five discs, carefully chosen – hours of music he hoped would be needed. He checked the oven and then the clock. Five minutes until she was due. What else, what else? He decided to fry an onion, he'd often found the scent of a frying onion worked as an aphrodisiac. It certainly said that the man of the house was a gourmand. He reached for the chopping knife – and his apartment dissolved into white.

scene change

Sarah finished doing her hair and makeup and left her dressing room with just a few minutes until air time, eagerness in her step. One of the stories she would do the segue into tonight was of particular interest to her, and to the whole Odyssey 5 team, she guessed. She'd do the news and then give Taggert a call to see if he'd watched it. Her assistant handed her the written transcript that would be on the teleprompter. Sarah nodded her thanks and glanced at the pages to be sure they were in order. Perhaps she'd call Neil first, she decided. She found Chuck abrasive, and his mood these days was hard to predict. The lights made the news anchor set glow a welcoming warmth. Across the set, conferring with the camera 2 operator, she spotted Troy who gave her an encouraging smile and nod. She smiled back and headed for her chair. The klieg lights shone brighter and brighter until she saw nothing but white.

scene change

"Fire RCS thrusters," Angela said. Commander Romanenko complied, and Angela deftly turned the orbiter so it was flying tail first.

"Prepare for OMS activation," said the Houston controller in her headset. Angela acknowledged, and her crew swiftly ran the checklist and fired the OMS engines, slowing the shuttle from its orbiting speed so it would fall back to Earth. All went smoothly. Angela glanced at Commander Romanenko. The cosmonaut's gaze flicked nervously over the displays, ready to criticize any failing. Angela was well familiar with the kind of misogyny that assumed a woman would inevitably screw something up. Her father had written the book on it and Taggert had added later chapters. Rather than be trained into meeting those low expectations, her courage always rose to surpass them. She knew she was good at this.

" Mach 20," she reported. "Fire RCS." Romanenko punched the buttons, and Angela pitched the spacecraft over so its belly faced the atmosphere and was once again flying nose forward. She watched the heat on the exterior sensors climb as the orbiter burned its way into earth's atmosphere. She glanced at the checklist strapped to her thigh because she was supposed to consult it, despite having the re-entry procedure memorized down to her bones. She flipped a switch on the forward RCS when the temperature reached 888 degrees celsius. "Burning surplus fuel," she said.

And everything went white.

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><p>Notes: Sorry about the stupid "scene change" lines, but ffnet won't let me use any rational section break indicator like extra white space or a series of asterisks or other characters, and I don't want horizontal rules all over my fic unless I can make them small, which I can't. Grrr.<p> 


	2. Blow Your Trumpets, Angels, and Arise

Disclaimer in part one

When Chuck could see again, his blood ran cold. What the fuck? He was sitting in a classroom – high school, by the look of it – with a teacher and half the class of kids looking at him expectantly. The formica surface of a school desk was cool beneath his hands. He no longer tasted lemonade.

"Neil?" the man asked, sounding expectant.

Chuck looked over his shoulder, expecting to see his son behind him somewhere, but behind him was only wall. He looked back at the man, who now looked vaguely familiar and was beginning to frown. When he spoke his voice was not his voice. It was Neil's. "Aw hell," he said, "what now?"

scene change

Neil staggered and nearly fell as his vision cleared. He'd been sitting, but abruptly found himself standing. In a kitchen area, with a chopping knife in his hand. Startled, he gripped the knife more tightly as if to hang on to reality. What - ?

He looked around cautiously. Oh, Kurt's place. At least he knew where he was. But how on earth had he got there? "Kurt?" he called, and his heart skipped a beat at the sound of his voice. He glanced back at the hand holding the knife and this time he nearly dropped it. Pale hairs curled on the back of his forearm, and the back of his hand, which he should know like the back of his hand, belonged to someone else. "Kurt," he called, more urgently, almost tossing the knife onto a cutting board placed beside the stainless steel sink. He moved around the kitchen island into the living room and caught a view of himself reflected in the glass door covering a bookshelf. Kurt's face looked back at him, a dumbfounded expression on it. He stared, trying hard to keep his thoughts from freezing. It had to be something like that, he told himself. The voice, his arms, the feeling of not fitting his body correctly. He was inhabiting Kurt. Or something.

The doorbell rang. "Kurt," sang a female voice, "I'm here."

scene change

Kurt found himself walking, which wasn't what he'd meant to do, so he stopped. He blinked, but he was still not seeing his apartment. He saw and heard busy people around him. Cameras, lights, cables, computer screens. His first thought was of laboratories and synthetics, but no, this appeared to be a television set of some kind. He had no idea how he came to be there. He tried to remember. Had Gina/Jennie arrived? Had she brought some really good drugs? A pretty girl with a headset on walked by, purpose in her stride, giving him a curious look. He smiled at her. Yeah, she was right; he certainly didn't belong here. He was holding something – papers – so he looked down at them. And saw his hands. And his breasts.

He let out a startled squeal, made all the more unmanly by the high-pitched female register he uttered the sound in. The papers in his hands – black, female hands – went flying as he grabbed his hips, waist and breasts. Oh god, the breasts! "What the hell is this?" he yelled, panicked. Heads turned toward him, alarmed and concerned. He backed up, retreating, he hoped, back to something more resembling normal, but he wore impossible shoes and trying to walk backwards in them in a panic didn't go so well. He tumbled to the tiled floor from where he got a good view of the skirt suit he was wearing and the long shapely legs emerging from the skirt. People rushed to his aid, but he could only stare and repeat, in a voice SO not the right one, "No, no, no."

scene change

Sarah thought she must have found her seat while she was blinded, but when her eyes adjusted to the lights they faded and it was not the newsdesk she was seated at. Her hands gripped the yoke of an aircraft. She froze in pure terror. Her gaze darted around; instruments, a man in astronaut uniform seated on her left, switches above her. There could be no doubt – she was flying the space shuttle. Her breathing came in swift pants as her body threw itself into overdrive; adrenaline, perspiration, pounding heart, but despite all of it she remained locked in position, unable to move. The astronaut to her left spoke. "Burn complete."

Sarah's eyes would move. She looked at the man at the corner of her vision. Her thoughts raced. She'd covered space and aviation news for years now (well, not now, actually. In the previous three years that hadn't happened yet.) and she knew some things. She knew she was not sitting in the commander's seat – he was. Which meant he was the pilot in command and if he was deferring to her, she must be in training somehow. Also, she'd flown now on a space shuttle, and something here wasn't right. It didn't feel right, it didn't – smell right. "Angela?" he asked, his own gaze darting over the instruments with increasing urgency, "The burn is complete. The checklist?" Sure enough there was a checklist strapped to her thigh, but it wasn't going to do her a bit of good. She was still reeling from the name he'd called her. Belatedly she realized that her hands squeezing the yoke in a deathgrip were white. White hands. Holy shit. Her vision began to gray at the edges. Hyperventilating, she realized. Oddly, her thoughts still worked rapidly. She'd seen pilots – Chuck and Angela included – speak a ritual that insured no one was ever uncertain about which pilot was flying. She swallowed, opened her mouth, and managed to say, "You have the aircraft."


	3. You Numberless Infinities of Souls

Disclaimers are in chapter one

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><p>Chuck strode out of the classroom, ignoring the teacher's "Where do you think you're going?" and headed for the high school's nearest bathroom. The mirror confirmed what he'd dreaded, but it was still a shock. His youngest son looked back at him, a decidedly annoyed expression on his face. He rolled his eyes when Chuck rolled his, and he raised his hand to his face when Chuck raised his. God damn it. He didn't need this.<p>

He exited the bathroom, eyeing the halls for the nearest door. Access into the school was controlled, but fortunately, getting out was a fire issue and the door he found was not locked. He was hailed out on the lawn by a security guard, but he just waved at the man and vaulted a low fence, gaining access to the street. The jump felt smooth and easy. "Jesus," he thought, "I've gotten old." He knew the neighborhood around the school – the large suburban Houston homes - but he also knew he was still a few miles from his own house. When he was sure he'd made his escape he took shelter under a maple tree and fished in Neil's pants for a phone. The first person on Neil's speed-dial was "Mom," and despite himself, Chuck had to pause for the wave of pain that washed over him. He moved on and found himself listed lower than Holly, but ahead of the rest of the Odyssey crew. He waited, uneasy, with the phone to his ear until he heard his own voice say, "Congratulations, you've reached Taggart. I'm busy, so leave a message."

"Damn," he said. "This is, uh, Chuck. Call me." As he returned the phone to his pocket he felt the jingle of a set of keys. Neil's keys, one of which was to his motorcycle. Ah hah, that was how he would get home. All he had to do was sneak back onto school property and boost his son's ride. He was already in the parking lot before he realized that, though he might get stopped for truancy, no one would think he was stealing Neil's bike.

He was Neil.

scene change

Neil, meanwhile, was Kurt, as the gorgeous woman at the door clearly believed. She slithered through the door before Neil could collect himself enough to make some excuse. In the process she pressed her barely-covered breasts into his chest, making his breath catch. "So this is your place," she said with approval, glancing around. "Do you call a place like this a loft? I like it."

"Uh," Neil recovered himself, at least enough to close the door, "I'm really sorry, but this isn't the best time." The voice was Kurt's, but his English accent was gone.

The woman hadn't noticed. "What do you mean?" she asked. She widened eyes that were greener than any cat's. Neil blinked. "You promised me dinner. It smells wonderful, by the way." She sashayed up to him and slipped her arms around his neck. Neil groped desperately for balance. Things were happening fast, like in the landing pattern of a high performance jet. This wasn't a dream or hallucination; the reality of the woman pressing herself against him ran any thought of that out of his head. So he really was in Kurt's place, inhabiting Kurt's body, with this gorgeous, wiggly, and VERY interested woman in his arms.

The interested woman slid away from him and backed up to the oven, holding his gaze the while. Enthralled, Neil followed. When she reached the oven, she opened the door and looked in, bending way over so almost every inch of her cleavage showed. She sniffed, long and hard, arching her long neck up and away from her luscious breasts, eyes closed. "Smells divine," she said. "Beef?" She opened her eyes. "What are we having?"

"I, uh—" Neil stammered.

"Whatever it is, it can wait," she said, closing the oven and smirking at him. She punched the "cancel" button on the oven and flowed back into Neil's arms.

"No, wait," Neil said. He gripped her wrists and pulled them down from around his neck. "First, uh, what was your name again?"

"Jeannie," she said with mock outrage, so Neil hadn't been wrong that this wasn't someone Kurt knew well.

"Jeannie. Of course. Jeannie, why don't you make yourself comfortable—" He extracted her hand which she was wrapping around his waist beneath his sports jacket, "here. Here in the, uh, in this room, while I go do something in the other room." She pouted, but released him, and Neil escaped into Kurt's bedroom, where he shut the door firmly and leaned his back against it. He breathed hard as if he'd been fighting, but it was love his body wanted to make, not war. "Dammit, Kurt," he muttered.

Now what should he do?

scene change

Kurt looked up at a circle of worried faces, people clucking over him and calling him Sarah. He struggled to get a grip. This was—this was some sort of hallucination. It had to be. He'd had enough weird experiences recently, he should be able to cope with one more.

"Sarah, Honey," said the black man crouching down to his right, whom Kurt belatedly realized was holding his hand and patting it, "we're live in two minutes. Can you do the show? What's wrong?"

Kurt snatched his hand (_his_ hand?) back from the man and clambered gracelessly to his feet (_his_ feet?), leaving off the high-heeled shoes. The solicitous crew members backed off and started scowling at clipboards and looking nervously toward a lighted set with the channel 13 newsdesk. Kurt looked at the black man. "What do I have to do?" He damped down on a flare of panic as he heard his female voice.

A frown crossed the man's face. "What do you have to do? Read the news. Look pretty. Like you always do." He scooped up the papers Kurt had been holding and handed them to him.

"Troy," said an agitated little man behind the black man's shoulder. "We need her on the set, now."

"All right, Mike, thanks," said Troy in a tone that dismissed him. "Sarah, are you sure you're all right? We can have Candace hold down the anchor position by herself, if you're not okay." Kurt looked to where he indicated. A stunning blonde woman wearing a blouse that was somehow both professionally correct and slyly seductive already sat at the desk, the studio lights glinting off her hair and the silvery lace over her bosom. The look she was giving him was unabashedly challenging.

"I just read it?" Kurt asked, taking the papers from him. "It's on the teleprompter, right?" He didn't wait for the startled Troy to frame an answer. "Of course I can. I'm fine." He started toward the set, his eyes on the beautiful woman, while he tried to ignore the foreign feel of the skirt around his thighs.

"Sarah," Troy called after him, and Kurt managed to remember to respond. He looked back. Troy was holding up cream colored pumps. "Don't you want your shoes?"

"I'd rather keep my neck unbroken, thanks," Kurt said, and padded toward his seat.

scene change

"I have the aircraft," the other man answered, sounding startled. Sarah swiveled the chair so she could lean over and put her head down near her knees. Her graying vision cleared immediately, though her pulse still pounded in her ears. "Angela, are you all right?"

"No," she said, but he was already giving orders on the headset. Orders to abort and stand down, and he sounded entirely too casual about it. Abruptly lights came on in the cabin like theater lights at the end of the show. A whining noise she hadn't been aware of wound down and ceased along with an accompanying vibration. Someone had a hand on her back—a woman she didn't know. She looked up and realized by the woman's earlier position in the cabin she must have Neil's job on the shuttle. The woman looked concerned for her and not the least concerned for the safety of the shuttle.

"Shall we get you a medic, Angela? Or can you walk to the infirmary?"

_Infirmary? _Sarah blinked and swallowed on a desert-dry throat. The voice of Houston control in her headset said, "Program has ended. Opening doors."

Sarah felt weak all over again, this time with relief. It was a simulator.

tbc


	4. And to your Scattered Bodies Go

A/N Disclaimers in part one

Chuck pulled into his driveway on Neil's motorcycle, and studied the house, alert for anything out of place. Anything other than himself, anyway. He'd just been here, right? Sipping lemonade on the back stoop. Suddenly concerned that he might have lost time as well as his own body, he checked his—Neil's—watch. Neil still wore his government-issued analog watch with the large glow-in-the-dark dial. Most astronauts accepted the edict that they must wear this watch on missions, but only the new guys wore the ugly thing off-duty like a private badge of honor. _I made astronaut,_ the watch said. Chuck frowned as he realized that in this timeline, Neil didn't own this watch yet. He must be wearing Mark's. Why would he do that?

At least the watch confirmed that it was only 35 minutes later than he last remembered being in his house. The front door opened to him, unlocked. He stepped inside and looked around. Everything looked normal, and he wondered what he'd accomplished by returning home. Well—and here was an uneasy thought—his own body ought to be here somewhere. "Hello," he called. Nothing. He headed for the last place he'd been—the back porch.

He stood alone at his back door, looking down at himself. He lay slumped like a dropped puppet on the single concrete step, the lemonade overturned and streaming onto the dry grass.

Shoving away the feeling of creepiness, he reached down and pulled himself onto his back. He was breathing, and he had a slow pulse. Chuck leaned back on his heels and sighed deep, studying his own sleeping face. No one ever gets to see what they look like with their eyes closed.

So when he'd called, uh, himself, there was no one home to answer.

Chuck picked up the lemonade glass. Two fingers worth remained in the bottom of the glass. He drained it. He took out Neil's phone again, and reconsidered the speed dial. There was no point in trying to call his son. Just where was Neil if Chuck was wearing Neil's body? He eyed the recumbent body he was sitting beside and dialed Angela. 

scene change

Neil looked around Kurt's bedroom; spacious bed, infrared camera, mirrored ceiling and large-screen TV. He had to think. What had happened? He looked down at his hands—not his. He looked up at the mirror—Kurt's face looked back at him, an unfamiliar expression of panic on it. _Calm down,_ he told himself. _Okay, I'm in Kurt's body._ _All things considered, it's not impossible. After all, I was put in my own body five years in the past._ Had The Seeker done this for some reason? Or was it more like when that sentient tried to download his father's consciousness into some archive? He looked around for a phone. Surely Kurt had one in his bedroom.

A knock at the door. "Kurt, can I come in?"

"No," he answered without thinking. "I'm, uh, getting changed."

His heart jumped as the doorknob turned. Jeanne's face appeared first through the door's opening. She grinned. "Is that really necessary?" The rest of her slithered into the room. She leaned against the wall, thrusting her breasts forward, and started unbuttoning her blouse.

Neil sighed. She was hot and willing, and it wasn't like he'd been getting any since his exile back to high school. He had other—rather important—concerns to attend to, but he found himself wavering. It wouldn't be betraying someone Kurt was in a real relationship with—she'd never even been to Kurt's place before. What about Holly? He was pretty sure it still counted as cheating on her. Even if it was with Kurt's body. Kurt's body? Ew. Abruptly the idea of having sex using a body that wasn't his own made him feel almost sick.

As he'd been wavering, he and Jeanne had moved closer to the king size waterbed, Jeanne removing her blouse to reveal a lacy black bra beneath. She passed in front of Kurt's bedside camera perched on its tripod, and Neil glanced at it to see how much it showed of her shape beneath her clothes.

Her silhouette was blue-green. It should have been red-yellow.

scene change

"And we're out," said the technician standing beside the TV camera operators. "Two minutes." Pleased with the job he'd done reading the teleprompter to the camera, Kurt turned to the gorgeous woman beside him, smiling his most winning smile. She scowled at him. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked. "Don't tell me you think that's going to help you." Before Kurt could reply, she slid out of her seat and into the hands of two women bearing makeup kits and hair products. The three of them cast disgusted looks over their shoulders at him as they dabbed cosmetics on the blonde anchor and spritzed her hair. On his other side, Troy approached at a rapid clip, looking worried.

"Sarah, honey," he said, "are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine," Kurt said, one eye on the women. "Tell me something. What's her story? The blonde."

"Candace? What do you mean?" Troy put a hand on Kurt's wrist in a gesture more intimate than Kurt liked. "Look, we're live in a minute forty. Can't you just read the news normally? Did you hurt your head when you fell?"

Oh. Kurt wanted to laugh. This was such an amusing hallucination. "I see. So my American accent didn't quite come off?"

"American-?" Troy blinked and glanced around at the hive of activity on the set. "Sarah, are you trying to sound British? That's crazy. Everyone knows you, honey."

The "honey" was starting to make Kurt's skin crawl. Or Sarah's skin. Whatever. He pulled his wrist free and picked up the papers on the desk in front of him. They had the same text as what had been on the teleprompter. "Sorry," he said, leaning hard on the "rr." He'd spent years surrounded by Americans and had actually caught his speech patterns matching theirs at times. He thought he'd done pretty well. "I'll do better with this next bit." He waved the papers with one hand and made a shooing motion with the other. "Go away, Troy."

Troy's eyes widened, but he was summoned by another headset-wearing man before he could say anything. Kurt studied the script he was next supposed to read, saying it in his head. He had no idea why he was dreaming he was Sarah, but he preferred to excel at whatever he was doing. He read: 

A break-in occurred last night at the Transhumanist Center, on Houston's south side. The thieves stole over $500,000 in equipment designed to study human consciousness. [cut to clip 2-24-123A Stiles] According to police, the Center's locked loading dock doors were ripped open by some mechanical force, doing another $100,000 in damage. The equipment, which was described by Transhumanist Center staff as large and extremely heavy, was removed from the site before police arrived, responding to the building alarms. Dr. Carl Egan, lead researcher and owner of the Center, was unavailable for comment. 

Kurt looked up from the paper at the TV studio crew members returning to their positions. The blonde anchor slid back into her seat beside him. "Thirty seconds," someone reported. Kurt looked at the woman beside him. "It's not a hallucination, is it," he said.

"What is your trauma," she asked.

"Shit," Kurt scooped up the piece of paper and shoved it in a suit jacket pocket. He got to his feet, only to be reminded that he was barefoot. He looked around for those godawful pumps. They were better than nothing. Expressions around him turned astonished, and the inevitable Troy rushed toward him. Kurt spotted the pumps on a table next to sound mixing equipment, and Troy caught him there as he fumbled to put them on.

"Sarah—"

Kurt straightened and slapped Troy on the shoulder, using him for support as he slid the second shoe on. "Sorry, old man, you'll have to carry on without me. Now where is my, uh, purse?"

scene change

In her own original timeline, Sarah had gone through considerable medical screening before being selected to fly aboard the Odyssey as a journalist, but she knew it was nothing compared to the physical scrutiny the astronauts underwent throughout their careers. She needed desperately to be released to get home, contact the others, do something, but now that she was an astronaut, any hint of a medical issue meant she had to be immediately subjected to every test the NASA flight surgeons could throw at her. She despaired of ever escaping the infirmary.

They gave her a CAT scan, took eleven vials of her blood, put her on a treadmill for a stress test and had her blow as hard as she could into a plastic tube. They looked in her eyes, her mouth, her ears and nose. They asked questions about her sleep, her vision, her periods and general level of stress. She made up answers as well as she could, sticking to her story that she got mysteriously dizzy in the simulator. And the whole time they called her Major Perry. It was surreal.

Finally she was taken off flight status for 24 hours and sent home. She knew her way around Houston Flight Center; what she didn't know was the combination to Angela's locker, where she would keep her civilian clothes, most likely including such useful items as a purse with car keys and a phone. She leaned her forehead against the locker and wondered what on earth she was going to do. She longed to call Troy for help and support, but Troy was part of her real life and she could never share with him the insanity of this other life. She'd already caused herself enough heartbreak with Corey. Tears of frustration stung her eyes, trying for release. She wanted to cry for herself, alone in an impossible situation, and, as always, wanted to cry for her baby, whom she wasn't allowed to even visit unsupervised. That grief followed her everywhere—that she couldn't save him. No one believed her. _Lord,_ she prayed, _help me._

She straightened and swallowed, telling herself sternly that Corey hadn't died yet, and she was just going to have to deal with this latest weirdness. She couldn't be Corey's mom in Angela's body.

_Wait a minute!_

She sped out of the locker room and stopped a passing young man in an Air Force uniform. "Excuse me," she said. "I've forgotten the combination to my locker. Can you tell me where I go to get that fixed?"

Corey's mom wasn't allowed within 500 feet of Corey, per court order. The injunction said nothing about Angela Perry, astronaut.


End file.
